Wayne Wright has been awarded one of the two 2007 Best Poster Presentations for SEPM at the AAPG meeting that was held in Long Beach, California, earlier this month. The poster, “Paleogeography and Depositional Geometries of the Pennsylvanian/Late Carboniferous Succession of the Greater Permian Basin Region, Texas and New Mexico,” reflects Wayne’s work on the Bureau's Permian Basin Geologic Synthesis Project. 04/30/07

RCRL Field Course makes a stop in the Sacramento Mountains. Xavier Janson (left) and Wayne Wright use panoramic photo to illuminate Tepee Mound in background.

Charles Kerans, Xavier Janson, and Jerry Bellian of the RCRL group led a consortia Spring Field Course April 15–19 titled "Linking Depositional, Diagenetic, Facies, Stratal Geometries, and Cycle Architecture: Examples from Paleozoic Carbonate Systems of West Texas and Southern New Mexico". The trip covered Guadalupe, Sacramento, and Franklin Mountains. Wayne Wright and Chris Zahm also attended the field course. 04/27/07

Dr. Sergey Fomel of BEG and his co-authors, Evgeny Landa and Tijmen-Jan Moser, have been chosen to receive the Loránd Eötvös Award from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) for their paper "Path-Integral Seismic Imaging," which was published in Geophysical Prospecting last year. The EAGE president will present the award to Evgeny Landa, as the first co-author, at a ceremony in London. 04/26/07

Director Scott W. Tinker, accompanied by Associate Director Jay Kipper and Bureau Scientist Hongliu Zeng, made an activity-packed trip to China April 8 through 15. At the Chinese University of Petroleum, they met with the Vice President for Research, Deans, and faculty at the university’s two main campuses. The meeting culminated with a signed cooperative agreement between CUP and The University of Texas at Austin. At PetroChina, a major national oil and gas company, they met with the Executive Vice President and senior managers, and at RIPED, the PetroChina research affiliate, they met the President and senior managers. Both Scott and Jay made presentations. The visit opened the door to other possible cooperative agreements between the Bureau and Chinese higher education and industry. 04/25/07

Steve Wolhart of Pinnacle Technologies in Houston will present this Friday's technical seminar titled “Hydraulic Fracture Mapping Results and Production Modeling in the Barnett Shale.” The seminar will begin at 8:30am in the Bureau's Main Conference Room. 04/23/07

Martin Jackson Martin Jackson participated in Hydro's "Professor Meeting," an informal workshop to discuss the latest ideas and issues in salt tectonics research. The meeting was held April 12-13 in Paracuru, a small seaside town near Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil. Participants at the workshop included geoscientists from Hydro and Petrobras and from the University of Barcelona, New Mexico State University, Imperial College, Royal Holloway, IFP Paris, Rennes University,

and The University of Texas at Austin. After full days of intellectual jousting, participants were exposed to a grueling social calendar, each evening being used to lubricate further discussion. 04/23/07

Ned Frost, Jackson School Ph.D. candidate and former Bureau Research Assistant, will be the featured speaker at this Friday’s seminar (April 20) in the Main Conference Room. Ned’s topic: “Syndepositional Fracture Patterns of the Devonian Reef Complexes, Canning Basin, Western Australia.” He will begin at 8:30 a.m. Arrive early for donuts and coffee and to grab a good seat! [abstract] 04/16/07

On April 20, BEG will host a “Madagascar” school from 2 to 5 p.m. in the Bureau’s Main Conference Room. Sergey Fomel and Jim Jennings of BEG, Paul Sava of the Colorado School of Mines, and Joe Dellinger from BP will be leading sessions on the open-source workflow application. Attendance at this open event is free. To learn more, click here. 03/26/07

Pitfalls” at the 2007 Annual AAPG Convention in Long Beach on April 3. This oral session explored the wide variety of alternative-energy sources that will be needed to satisfy the world’s energy demands as it moves from hydrocarbon-based resources to alternative resources by the mid-21st century. The program included fuel-cell technology, biofuels and geothermal energy, as well as more exotic potential sources of energy, such as Helium-3 on the Moon. These alternative energy sources were compared and contrasted with unconventional, hydrocarbon-based energy sources such as gas hydrates, shale gas, and heavy oil, which are currently being developed as a bridge to these alternative-energy sources. 04/10/07

Fresh from his excursion in Long Beach, Tucker Hentz has offered to be the Friday seminar replacement this week. Tucker will be speaking on "Reservoir-Scale Depositional Facies, Trends, and Controls on Sandstone Distribution of the Lower Atoka Group ("Bend Conglomerate"), Fort Worth Basin, Texas. Date: April 13. Time: 8:30 a.m. Place Bureau Main Conference Room.[abstract] 04/10/07

On Wednesday April 4, 2007, Dr. Michelle Foss gave a presentation "Beyond the Science AND Economics: The Politics of Global Energy" at the AAPG 2007 Annual Convention & Exhibition in Long Beach, CA. She presented during the Geoscience and Public Policy panel session. To download the presentation slides, click here. 04/09/07

The final doctoral examination for Lorena Moscardelli has been scheduled for April 10, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. in the Department of Geological Sciences Barrow Conference Room. Lorena will present and defend her 4 years of research on “Mass Transport Processes and Deposits in Offshore Trinidad and Venezuela and Their Role in Continental Margin Development." All dissertation defenses are open to the public, and

you are invited to attend. Chad Weisenburger (M.S.) will present a technical talk on Tuesday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m. in the Geology Building 2.324 (Boyd Auditorium). Weisenburger, a graduate researcher working with the Quantitative Clastics Laboratory Industrial Associates program at BEG, will present his work titled “Salt Tectonics and its Impact on Sedimentation in the Safi Haute Mer Area, Offshore Morocco.” 04/05/07

The weekly seminar speaker will be BEG veteran, Seay Nance. Seay will present "Hydrochemical Variability and Detection of Cross-Formational Flow in the High Plains (Ogallala) and Plateau Aquifer Systems: Crockett and Glasscock Counties, Texas." The seminar will begin promptly at 8:30 a.m. in the BEG Main Conference Room. [abstract] 04/01/07